HUMANS
2024 Video Installation - Cacaofabriek, HelmondThe viewer enters the space and sees an array of randomly placed LED screens flickering softly with pixelation. Once the viewer steps into the light shining from above, an image of the viewer appears on the screen. 15 seconds later, 3 more images of the viewer appear, from different angles, with a corresponding delay. The images are filmed by cameras attached to, and protruding through, the LED screens.
The immersive, close circuit installation embodies the literal encroachment on our physical space by screens and cameras. A reference to the telescreens in George Orwell’s 1984. Omnipresent and never turned off, they are an unavoidable source of propaganda and tools of surveillance.
Our privacy erodes in the digital enclosures we inhabit. We submit to the collection of our audiovisual data, often unwillingly and unknowingly. Our online selves, labouring away without pay to create endless profits for mega corporations owned by billionaires. What Mark Andrejevic calls ‘The work of being watched’.
‘Consumers who submit to comprehensive surveillance in response to offers of convenience and participation perform valuable work for corporations and marketers..
... a critical approach to forms of surveillance facilitated by interactive media must focus on asymmetries of power and control over information technologies and resources.’
From: The work of being watched: Interactive media and the exploitation of self-disclosure
